


tenderness with a side of kitchen fires

by bastards



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Post-Time Skip, osamu attempts teaching, sakusa cannot cook and consequently almost commits unintentional arson, tender onigiri making
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:35:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26155861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bastards/pseuds/bastards
Summary: “I know you're naturally good at a lot of things, but cookin' ain’t easy. It’s hard work, but it’s honest work, and it makes you feel good.”Kiyoomi is merely a man. Cooking is merely a skill. Arson is merely a felony.
Relationships: Miya Osamu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Comments: 34
Kudos: 149
Collections: 🐶🍙 omigiri fanfic collection





	tenderness with a side of kitchen fires

**Author's Note:**

> cw food
> 
> *slaps roof of me* this baby can only write domesticity and established relationship
> 
> happy birthday darc!! i hope it's a good one <3

Kiyoomi stumbles down the stairs, digging the heel of one hand into sleepy eyes. An Onigiri Miya shirt hangs slightly too big off his lean frame, the collar loose and worn with age and wear. The morning light filters through the curls hanging halo-like around his head. He’s no angel though. He’s half-alive— barely human, even— before his caffeine fix.

There’s no way to win in the mornings. It’s warm in the bed, until the human space heater that is Osamu inevitably gets up. Kiyoomi gets cold, no matter how many blankets he piles on. Forcing himself out of bed is almost worse. He’ll never get used to the first rush of freezing air when he forces himself to stand up, never get used to the ice of the hardwood floors touching his bare feet.

Osamu waltzes up to Kiyoomi, far too awake for the time of morning. Years and years of waking up unreasonably early to work out logistics or finances or even just for food prep has left him with the uncanny ability to pop up without an alarm, instantly alert. His hands cradle a cup of coffee, in a bright pink mug. Too much creamer and piles of sugar, sweet milk with a hint of caffeine that quite literally made Osamu gag when he first tried the concoction. Just the way Kiyoomi likes it.

“Mornin’ Kiyo!” Osamu smiles wide and easy. He’s absolutely insufferable. Makes Kiyoomi want to wring his neck or maybe kiss him.

Kiyoomi reaches out his hands, making grabbing motions with his fingers. It’s hard to string a coherent thought together at this time, much less voice a demand out loud.

Osamu tuts like the little shit he is.

“Uh-uh Kiyoomi, use your words.”

Never mind. Kiyoomi definitely wants to wring his neck.

He makes the most disgruntled noise he can muster, and grits out, “Coffee.”

Osamu gives him a _look_.

“Please.”

Osamu presses the mug into Kiyoomi’s hands. “Now, was that so hard? I have to head out now, but breakfast is ready. Make sure you're not late to practice again.”

Kiyoomi reaches one hand out to flip him off, but Osamu has already turned around, practically skipping out the door. He glances back right before the door closes, waves at Kiyoomi. The look in his eyes is far too fond. Kiyoomi gives a small wave back, dimples appearing in his cheeks.

Kiyoomi usually gets home later than Osamu does. Morning practice, lunch. A brief respite at home. Kiyoomi usually showers, puts on a face mask if he’s feeling especially fancy. Evening practice. Something quick for dinner if he’s hungry, waits until he gets home if he’s not. Extra practice at the gymnasium, typically with Atsumu. Kiyoomi pushes himself further and further every day, forces himself to improve. His reward at the end of the day is Osamu’s cooking, takes an ice bath if he wants to suffer. Sleeps with his knees curled up, warm inside Osamu’s arms.

Some days though, Kiyoomi gets home earlier. Something happens. Practice is cancelled, or it ends early, or Kiyoomi is too drained to stay for something extra. Perhaps Osamu stays late to help out in the kitchen or wash dishes or to solve a logistics issue.

Kiyoomi usually gets takeout on those days. It’s greasy, unhealthy, purely self-indulgent, and most definitely does not fit within his strict diet.

One day, Kiyoomi convinces himself to cook. It’s an impulse decision, and Kiyoomi’s halfway through chopping up vegetables before he realizes that first, he doesn’t know what he wants to make, and second, perhaps more importantly, he has absolutely _no clue_ how cooking works. You’d think that Kiyoomi would at least be able to absorb basic kitchen skills after spending so much time around people who can cook. When he was a child, his father. As a college student, his roommate. Now, Osamu. The extent of Kiyoomi’s cooking skills are instant ramen, rice, and maybe toast if he’s feeling lucky.

He decides on fried rice. Easy enough.

Somehow, somewhere, everything goes disastrously wrong. Osamu comes home to a disconnected fire alarm and the smell of something burning. Kiyoomi is sitting on the floor in a flowery apron, head buried in his hands.

After that, Kiyoomi gathers his pride up in his arms, dumps it at Osamu’s feet, and begs him to teach Kiyoomi how to cook. They start simple at first. Basic things like how to properly operate the stove, how heat works, how _not_ to use the cast iron pan for making eggs. 

(The first time Kiyoomi makes eggs, Osamu doesn’t notice until it’s too late, and he spends twenty minutes scraping burnt eggs off the bottom of the cast iron.) 

Kiyoomi wasn’t naturally good at everything, but he grew up excelling at the things he cared about. Volleyball, his studies, keeping everything neat and clean and tidy. Good time management skills also came easy to him, his need to see everything through to the end helping him greatly. How else would you juggle a college athletics career while simultaneously double majoring in astronomy and philosophy? He never had cause to be worried about other things.

However, Kiyoomi is decidedly _not_ naturally good at cooking. The need to constantly monitor whatever was cooking combines with his brain screaming to precisely control every action and it makes his stress levels skyrocket. Osamu practically begs him to step away for just one second.

“The kitchen won’t blow up while you're gone. You're so tense, how’re you gonna cook? Nothing will burn if you look away for a minute.”

It doesn’t work. Eventually, Osamu just gives up.

Learning is a slow, convoluted process.

Kiyoomi gets better. Obviously. You don’t sacrifice every free day you have for months to just stay at the same level as before. He’s able to tackle relatively simple dishes. Oyakodon, scrambled eggs, fried rice (thank god). On the days he gets home before Osamu, he stops ordering takeout. Instead, he cooks. When Osamu gets home, sniffs at the air, and smells whatever Kiyoomi’s cooking, he takes off his shoes, drops his bags, and runs to smack a disgusting sloppy kiss on Kiyoomi’s cheek. Kiyoomi will complain to high hell, but it secretly makes him feel warm.

On their anniversary, Kiyoomi decides to finally tackle onigiri. They had planned to spend the whole day together, but an emergency came up at an Onigiri Miya branch that Osamu himself had to fix. Osamu had launched almost insufferable amounts of apologies at Kiyoomi, _I’m so sorry_ s and _I’ll make it up to you_ s practically dripping down Osamu’s being and forming into puddles at his feet. Kiyoomi waves him off, telling him to go take care of business. _We can just go through with the plans another time, it’s no big deal_.

Kiyoomi pulls up a video on Youtube, as well as a recipe. He lays out the ingredients. Rice, salt, seaweed. Kiyoomi adores the simplicity, how easy it is to put together a cohesive, comforting meal with so few items.

He washes his hands first. Runs them under warm water, rubs soap in between his palms, along his fingers and into the crevices of his fingernails. Scrubs for 20 seconds, counts down in his head. Rinses them off under the faucet. He gets the rice out next. Puts it in a large bowl, washes it. Shifts it in circular motions. The sense of routine is familiar to him, makes him feel at home. Seeing the excess starch bleed into the water until it’s murky and pouring it out is indescribably satisfying to Kiyoomi, watching the impurities disappear down the depths of the kitchen sink.

He puts the rice in their rice cooker, starts preparing the seaweed. Measures proportions carefully, cuts small pieces in precise lines. He gets out two small glass bowls, filling them with salt and water respectively.

The rice cooker beeps then, and he spreads the hot rice on a plate, letting it sit until it doesn’t burn to the touch.

It’s all going well until Kiyoomi actually gets to forming the onigiri. He takes a portion of rice between his wet, salt-laden hands, tries to mirror the video that’s playing on his laptop. The person in the video moves too fast for Kiyoomi to follow, hands moving in quick, practiced motions. The coveted triangle of rice appears, seemingly out of a formless blob. Kiyoomi moves his hands in the same fashion, but something always seems to go wrong. He presses with too much force, and the rice falls apart. He presses too _loosely_ , and the rice falls apart. His onigiri aren’t onigiri at all, instead manifesting in shabby, weird shapes that in no way resemble the perfect pearly triangles that Osamu can churn out 10 of in a minute.

Kiyoomi objectively knows that nothing comes easy in cooking. It was the first lesson that Osamu hammered into his head when he started learning.

“I know you're naturally good at a lot of things, but cookin’ ain’t easy. You gotta actually work for it. Hell, I was terrible at cookin’ when I first started, but I kept at it. It’s hard work, but it’s honest work, and it makes you feel good."

Kiyoomi’s definitely not feeling too good right now. The rice in his hands falling apart somehow feels like it’s an extension of his life, that his life is falling apart. Sakusa Kiyoomi, 25, starting wing spiker on the MSBY Black Jackals as well as the Japan National Men’s Volleyball team. Going strong in a steady relationship that makes him feel loved every day. A good network, meaningful relationships. By all means, he has his shit together. A single onigiri should not make Kiyoomi feel like a failure, but it does.

Strong arms wrap around his waist, and Kiyoomi flinches in surprise. Sometime in the middle of Kiyoomi’s wallowing, Osamu must have come home. A kiss is pressed into his forehead, right on the two moles hovering above his right eyebrow.

Osamu tilts his head. “Are you makin’ onigiri? For _me_? So you have a soft side after all.” He grins. “I did tell you cookin’ wasn’t easy though. Here, let’s try again.”

He wraps his large, calloused hands around Kiyoomi’s thin, bony ones, presses them around the lump of rice in Kiyoomi’s palms. Within Kiyoomi, something ignites, flooding him with warmth that he only ever feels after the satisfying sting of a volleyball smacking right into his palm. With firm, careful movements, Osamu guides him, until there’s a perfect, hefty onigiri left in Kiyoomi’s hands. 

“Osamu, will you teach me how to make onigiri?” Somehow, in their cooking ventures, Osamu had never offered. To be fair, Kiyoomi had never asked either. Until now. Osamu untangles himself from Kiyoomi, leaves one hand around his waist. Looks at Kiyoomi with glowing softness in his eyes, makes butterflies flutter in Kiyoomi’s stomach.

He’s reminded of approaching Osamu for the first time. Practice had just ended, and Kiyoomi was in and out of the showers first, as always. Osamu was waiting at the entrance of the gymnasium, probably there to pick up Atsumu. As with many things regarding Osamu, Kiyoomi operated off of pure impulse.

He had always admired Osamu more out of the twins. The absolute confidence, the quiet hunger with which he played. Atsumu was plenty good, sure, but Osamu was just something different. Kiyoomi saw him far too many times over the course of his last Nationals. Perhaps he had been searching Osamu out, eyes scanning each room he entered under the guise of disinterest. He wanted to walk up, strike up a conversation. He longed for the ability to get close, to be able to interact _normally_ and like a regular person would. Not whatever he was, at 17, lanky and long-limbed and closed off.

At 24, he was still lanky and long-limbed, but with far more freedom than before. Although he was never particularly wild in college, something about being in an environment where he couldn’t control all the factors unlocked _something_ within him. He learned to allow himself to go for what he wanted, let himself be a little more selfish than before. Satisfaction kept him coming back, left him greedy for more, and his impulses rarely failed him.

So he walked up to Osamu, all false confidence and indifference and with adrenaline running through his veins. Asked for his number. Obtained said number. Crinkled his eyes at the corners, did a little happy dance inside. Exchanged a few more words. Didn’t manage to escape before Atsumu came barrelling out of the locker room, with words of, “Omi-omi, don’t ya _dare_ fuck ‘Samu. That’s my _brother_.” and far too many gagging noises. Osamu smacks Atsumu on the back of his head, and the two start bickering. Kiyoomi is silently grateful for the mask obscuring his dimples from the rest of the world.

The same warmth runs through Kiyoomi’s chest now, lights up his entire body. He thinks it may be love. The dimples appear, unmasked.

“Of course I will, Kiyo.” Osamu’s lips press against his own. “I love makin’ onigiri, and I love you. It works out.”

“Thank you, Osamu.” The words are whispered between their mouths, that sacred space that they share. Tender, hallowed, home. “I love you too.”

Miya Osamu causes _something_ to unfurl in Kiyoomi’s chest, something that’s beautiful and bright and makes Kiyoomi feel like he’s about to tip over that last inch and fall off a precipice. 

He has faith that Osamu’s arms will catch him every time.

**Author's Note:**

> *PBS voice* this fic was made possible by:  
> [rey](https://twitter.com/letsgoseijoh), for reading over this  
> omigiri as a ship (chefs kiss) also omigiri server. thanks for enabling me.  
> and readers like you. thank you! (in all honesty thank you for reading i hope you enjoyed aaaaa)
> 
> my twitter is [oyakudon](https://twitter.com/oyakudon) come yell with me if you're so inclined


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